Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol

You've seen this bit a million times in the trailers, but it's still pretty friggin' sweet.

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
Stunts and Effects: 95% 
Logic: 14%
Soundtrack: 85% 
TnA: 60% 
Cognitive Decline of Audience: 44% 
Overall Inches on the Action Erection Scale: 11 out of 12 

There is a new Mission: Impossible out in non-IMAX theatres this week (serious filmgoers got to see it on the BIG big screen last week). Which, at least for this action junkie, demands the question: Which Ethan Hunt do we get today? Do we get crew cut and paranoid Ethan Hunt from the first M:I? Anime-haired/spin-move Ethan Hunt from M:I2? Concerned husband and practical-looking Ethan Hunt from M:I3? Or none of the above?

Y’see, the Mission: Impossible film franchise has always been a vanity project of Tom “The Running Man” Cruise --- an opportunity for the actor to fulfill every interracial lip lock and extreme sports fantasy he can imagine. In that, Tom has been extremely successful, but it has made the reoccurring schizophrenic role of Ethan Hunt a bronze holder to the very distinctive James Bond and Jason Bourne.

In Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol, we get a different Ethan Hunt entirely --- one lightyears from the devoted husband we got in Mission: Impossible 3. While this film uses the J.J. Abrams-helmed previous film as a bit of character motivation, it’s apparent that Tom Cruise’ knows his game is so strong that he can carry a soft script armed just with his trademark intensity and charm. And he’s right. M:I4 is utter nonsense. The type of film where Cruise and the rest of the actors speed-read through the exposition hoping we won't catch on that it’s crap. Right again.

What isn't crap is the playful nature of Incredible’s director Brad Bird’s first live-action turn. Bird has a cartoon imagination, an action movie budget, and one of cinema’s highest-grossing actors of all-time. He waste nothing and his take on action in Ghost Protocol is massive. While Brian De Palma took the Hitchcockian approach on the first M:I, John Woo took the heavy-handed Hong Kong cinema approach with M:I2, and J.J. Abrams took the Alias-approach with M:I3, Bird manages to out over-the-top all three films by making the most physics-less set pieces out of the Kremlin and several (horizontal and vertical) miles of Dubai.

It’s all equally familiar and new and exciting just watching Bird make a 49-year-old (!) Tom Cruise run, jump, and almost fly for two hours. Finally, this confirms a suspicion of mine that Cruise doesn’t have to act like Ethan Hunt, because he is Ethan Hunt.

Tom Cruise is in this movie, right?